Despair's Last Journey Part 18

'What's your name?' he asked, by way of keeping the conversation going.

'Tom Ketling,' said the boy, 'but they calls me "Tat" for short, because I used to hang about outside Tattersall's and run errands. I picked up most of my education there. There ain't many of 'em as can teach me anything.' He broke off short in his confidences at the sound of a heavy shuffling footstep on the stairs. 'Oh, my!' he cried, 'this is a marble, and no error! How are you, Forty?'

'You here?' said the man thus hailed. 'Why, how you _are_ reforming!'

His voice had a deep chuckling husk in it, as if he had just finished an exhausting laugh, and his lungs still panted. His face and figure were vague in the fog and dimness of the place, but as he rolled and chuckled nearer Paul stared at him, not without reason. He was respectably attired at the first glance in a heavy overcoat of milled cloth, with facings of some sort of cheap imitation fur, and a silk-hat which, though creased in many places, was flatteringly oiled, and shone with a l.u.s.tre to which its age bequeathed no right. He had a high collar which rose to the cheek-bone, and was severely starched, though yellow and serrated at the edges. His face was a flame of high colour, and his nose was a burlesque on the nose of Bardolph. It was not merely huge; it was portentous. It was of the size and shape of a well-grown winter pear, and it wagged as he walked, touching now one bloated cheek and now the other. It was garnished with many dark bosses, as if it were ornamented by round nails of a purple tone, and when once the owner had carried it fairly under the gas-jet it seemed as if it were the nose which shed such light as there was to struggle with the fog. 'You see it,'

he cried, with the same short-winded chuckle. 'Everybody sees it Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!' He shook his head rapidly from side to side, and the amazing nose tapped either cheek in turn with an actual audible sound like the faintest clapping of hands. Apart from this deformity and the sanguine colour of his face he was a jolly-looking fellow, and his brown eyes twinkled as if they had been transparent, with a flickering light behind them. 'I got that,' he said, rubbing die nose with the palm of one hand, 'from my highly respectable grandfather. He was a great landowner, so I'm told, down Guildford way, and drank more port and brandy-punch than any man in England. This'--he fondled the nose again--'this skipped a generation. My highly respectable father's proboscis was pure Greek--Greek so pure, sir, that the late President of the Royal Academy has been known to follow him about London in a hansom-cab from dawn to dewy eve in the hope of catching its outline.

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!' He wagged the monstrous feature again. He stopped short with a ludicrous solemnity. 'Your highly respectable name is Armstrong?'

he said with a voice and att.i.tude of courtesy. 'I judged so. You are a turnover apprentice from the establishment of your highly respectable father in the country? Exactly. My highly respectable name is Warr, sir.

I am sometimes known as Forty in recognition of a little feat of mine, in respect of which "let other lips," et cetera. I suppose that I have never told you----' He was in an att.i.tude of extremest confidence, but he changed it with a flourish, 'I was told, sir, to be here to meet you. It is mine to initiate you into the highly respectable mysteries. I suppose I never told you '--the air of confidence was back again--'that I am the owner of an heirloom?'

'I don't remember that you ever did,' Paul answered.

'An heirloom,' the man with the nose exclaimed, 'an heirloom which--in short, a highly respectable heirloom--a work of art. This is varnis.h.i.+ng day. Would you like to see the work of art varnished? Then come with me.' He laid aside the burlesque air, and said seriously: 'There will be nothing done here for an hour.'

Paul followed him down the stairs and into the street, where the fog seemed thicker than before.

'Is it often like this in the City?' he asked.

'No,' said his companion; 'I regret to say it isn't We get very little open weather in the City at this time of year. As a rule, in February you find the City clouded.'

'This is quite clouded enough for my taste,' said Paul, coughing and weeping.

'My dear sir,' said Mr. Warr, 'this is merely Italian! Ah! I forgot You are fresh from the country. You think this foggy! Well, perhaps it is not quite so bright as we get it some days. But a real fog in London is a very different thing from this. In 'the great fog of January, '68, it happened very fortunately for me that the partner of my highly-respectable joys and sorrows had asked me to purchase a meat-axe.

I hewed my way home by its aid, sir. When I reached London Bridge I was so fatigued that I was compelled to sit down, and to beguile the time I cut a portion of the fog in strips, and modelled the strips into a very handsome set of hat-pegs. They would have made a highly superior souvenir of an interesting occasion, but they were, unfortunately, stolen. By the way, if you happen to have sixpence about you I needn't ask for credit for the varnish. I hate debt as I hate the devil. Thank you, sir. This way.' He rolled into a gin-shop, and called for 'a quartern and two outs,' tendering Paul's coin in payment.

Paul declined any share in the liquor. He was watchful, and as full of interest as a child. The battered pewter counter, with little pools of dirty liquid in its hollows; the green-painted, flat-bellied barrels with bands of faded gilding; the moist and filthy sawdust on the floor, with last week's odours in it and a mere sprinkling of clean sawdust on top, offering its hint of the timber-stacks in the yard next door to home; the winking gas with the fog-halo round it; the s.h.i.+rt-sleeved barman; the female habitual drunkard here for a dram thus early, and holding her gla.s.s in both shaking palms as if she warmed her hands at it; the ceiling, cobwebbed and clouded with gas-smoke; the gaping door, like a dead jaw that would have dropped but for the straps that held it--all these things beat themselves in on his intelligence as if they would make an eternal pressure there. It was as if the place had a moral physiognomy of its own, and as if through countless details he absorbed an instinct as to its daily life.

'I suppose,' said Paul, 'you varnish that work of art pretty often?'

'As often as I can,' Mr. Warr responded. 'But the varnish is costly, my credit is nowhere worth a tinker's d.a.m.n, and I live in a chronic impecuniosity.'

He varnished the work of art with a genuine relish, and, the process being over, he and Paul returned to the office, where signs of life were beginning to show themselves. The flare of some thirty or forty lighted gas-brackets made an inroad on the fog, and knots of men were laughing and talking. It very soon became clear to Paul's intelligence that the daily work and conversation of his new companions were not in any marked degree ruled or moulded by the influence of that religious literature with which they helped to furnish the world. They were neither better nor worse than the average British workman; but they certainly cursed a good deal, and a stiffish breeze of indecency blew through all their speech.

In ten minutes every man was at his case, and silence reigned. The overseer--a dyspeptic, long-haired man, who looked like a dejected tragedian--interviewed the new-comer, supplied him with a certain amount of 'copy,' and left him to his devices. Mr. Warr worked by his side.

That gentleman without the silk-hat came out bald, and without the fur-trimmed overcoat came out shabby, in a very threadbare old black rock. He wore a portentous pair of cuffs to match the antiquated collar, and these being slipped off and the coat-sleeves turned up for convenience in working, Paul wondered if any s.h.i.+rt or other under-garment kept them company. Any doubt he may have had on that point was dissipated early in the day, for Mr. Warr chancing to stoop with his head towards Paul, gave the young man a clear view of his bare back, between which and the world at large there was nothing but the threadbare coat.

About half-past twelve o'clock the small boy whom Paul had encountered on his arrival began to move about from man to man with a strip of paper. Each man looked at the paper and spoke a single word. Then the boy invariably p.r.o.nounced a word which sounded like 'vedge,' and the man either shook his head or nodded. Paul wondered what this might mean, until his turn came, when he found a choice of viands written in a scrawling hand upon the sc.r.a.p of paper:

'Boiled beef and carrots.

'Boiled pork and pease-pudding.'

'It's sixpence-halfpenny if you have it here, sixpence if you go out for it.'

Paul made his choice, and the boy said 'Vedge?' in an accent of inquiry.

'What's "vedge"?'

The boy looked up in a momentary wonder, and then grinned knowingly, and shook his head.

'What do you mean by "vedge"?'

'Ah!' said the boy, 'you don't get over me.'

'I'm not trying to get over you. I want to know what you mean.'

'Oh yes,' said the boy; 'of course you do! They don't eat greens and taters where you come from! Oh dear no; not at all!'

'That's it, is it? Then, I take vedge.'

'If s an extra penny, mind you. You pays on Sat.u.r.day.'

The boy turned to Mr. Warr, who made his choice also.

A little later a voice said 'Halt!' and there was a clatter of composing-sticks laid smartly down on the cases. Almost at the same instant the small boy came in with a pyramid of plates with flat tin covers. 'Beef and vedge,' shrilled the boy, and, setting down his burden, charged out again, returning instantly with another cry of 'Beef, no vedge.' He was out and in again with a cry of 'Pork and vedge,' and out and in again with a cry of 'Pork, no vedge.' Then a shock-headed youth appeared with a basket foil of tin measures and a big can of black beer. He was met with an instant storm of chaff, and allusions of a Rabelaisian sort were made to one Mary for whom he would seem to have had a kindness. He departing, the men set themselves to the serious business of dinner, and, the meal being over, they gathered into groups, and smoked and talked, whilst the small boy cleared away.

An ap.r.o.ned man in a very old skull cap of black silk, and a shabby frock-coat like Mr. Warr's, approached Paul and announced himself as 'the Father of the Chapel.' He welcomed the young man with a curious formal courtesy, and aired sc.r.a.ps of Latin with which Paul was familiar from many years of study of the specimen-books of the type-founders, who used to exhibit the most exquisite specimens of the printers' art in quotations from Cicero. Mr. Warr borrowed sixpence on the plea of sudden and severe internal pains, and went out to varnish the work of art. He returned with a moist eye, and in the course of the afternoon twice or thrice dipped his bulbous nose into the letter 'e' box, and snored for a minute at a time among the types.

Day followed day, and one day was like another. Sat.u.r.day came, and Paul received his wages. He paid his first weekly bill at his boarding-house by aid of the remnant of the sovereign left for pocket-money. Next week saw him in debt. The third week saw him dinnerless. He knew the mistake his father had made, but it did not occur to him to take any active steps to remedy it Any lad of his years with a farthing's-worth of business faculty would have written home to explain his case, and would have gone into cheaper lodgings. Paul chose to do nothing, but to wander hungrily and vacantly through the city in the dinner-hour. He found no more varnish for the work of art, and his working comrade was less amiable than he had been. The week's end found him a little further in debt, in spite of abstention. His landlady, who thought he had been impertinent in that unconscious matter of the aspirate, was not disposed to be friendly.

'I can tell by your looks,' she said, 'that you have been dissipating, and I know that you are wasting your money. I shall write and tell your father so.'

'Very well,' said Paul.

He was voracious at the supper-table, and that made the landlady no kinder to him. He ate like a wolf at every meal on Sunday, and his fellow-boarders chaffed him; but the lady of the house looked as if she would fain have poisoned him.

She asked Paul into her private sitting-room after supper, and he accepted her invitation.

'I shall expect a satisfactory settlement at the end of this week, Mr.

Armstrong,' she said icily. 'Unless I get it from you I shall write to your home for it, and in any case I shall be obliged if you will leave.'

'Very well,' said Paul.

He thought all this rather unprosperous for a beginning of a free life, but he cared astonis.h.i.+ngly little. If he had looked at the prospect, he might have begun to think it in a small way very serious. Recalling the time as he sat in his mountain eyrie, he found in it the first indication of his own irresponsibility, a knack of blinding himself to consequences.

Monday came, and he dined. It did not seem worth while to deny himself any further. Tuesday came, and in the middle of the morning's work a man rapped on his case with a composing-stick, and said aloud, 'I call a Chapel.' Mr. Warr turned on Paul, and told him he must go outside and wait until such time as the meeting thus summoned was over. He and three apprentices cl.u.s.tered on the landing. The doors were closed, and they waited for half an hour.

At the end of that time they were re-admitted, and Paul was solemnly escorted to the old man with the skull-cap.

'I have a question to ask you, Mr. Armstrong,' the old gentleman began.

'Were you properly indentured to this business.'

'No,' said Paul. 'I picked up what I know about it in my father's office.'

'You were never bound apprentice?'

'No.'